This year will witness the end of the French program for PV tenders known as “CRE4”, which began in 2016. To date, they have enabled over 7.2 GW of solar capacity to benefit from a subsidized tariff (feed-in tariff or feed-in premium). A few months before the last CRE4 tenders and the launch of the PPE2 (or CRE5), Finergreen evaluates their impact on the French solar industry.

The performance ratio test is at the core of the handover from EPC to owner. Yet sometimes, even when best practice is applied – and without particularly demanding guaranteed values to be achieved – these tests fail good projects. This can lead to costly delays and wasted effort spent trying to find issues that might not exist. Everoze Partner Dario Brivio reviews the likelihood of this happening and considers ways to increase confidence in the precision of such tests, based on recent independent analysis of real-world projects.

The PV industry has experienced several rounds of price increases since the second half of 2020, from polysilicon to materials such as PV glass and films. Between July 2020 and February 2021, prices quoted for 3.2 mm and 2 mm glass surged by more than 60% per square meter. Prices for EVA and POE encapsulant films skyrocketed by more than 40% and 10%, respectively. Prices for silver paste also rose 7%, and have since remained stubbornly high. PV InfoLink Chief Analyst Corrine Lin examines the impact of silver’s recent price turbulence on PV cell manufacturing.

Annual battery storage installations will exceed 10 GW/28 GWh in 2021, following a particularly strong year in 2020, despite the challenges created by the global pandemic, writes IHS Markit analyst Mike Longson. Combined solar and storage will be a core focus for new deployment in 2021, as the front-of-the-meter and behind-the-meter energy storage markets are both expected to grow significantly in the months ahead.

The seventh session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development convened on the theme of “Building forward better towards a resilient and green Africa to achieve the 2030 & 2063 Agenda” and promote the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.

But new ventures into coal-fired steam and petrochemicals products helped state-owned China Shuifa Singyes towards a significantly healthier balance sheet in 2020.

The polysilicon maker lurched from a $17m profit in 2019 to a $960 million loss last year, according to an unaudited extract from its overdue annual figures. Publication is being held up by an auditor enquiry relating to a $71m abandoned-production-project pre-payment which appears to be either owed by, or to, a GCL subsidiary.

More than 7% of the U.K.’s solar generation capacity is now unsubsidized, according to trade body Solar Energy UK, with the nation reaching more than 14 GW of photovoltaic projects during the first three months of the year.

West Africa hogged more than twice as much investment as the east in a year which saw stock market backing plunge an ‘alarming’ 46%, leaving donor grant funding and debt to pick up the slack during a Covid-hit year, according to off-grid industry body GOGLA.

Rising volumes of photovoltaic project capacity are increasing the incidence of negative price periods for electricity–and changing the times of day when they occur.

The Australian Energy Market Commission has released proposals to reward fast frequency services in the National Electricity Market for the first time.

The feed-in tariff granted reduces each quarter, in line with how much solar capacity was installed in the previous three-month period.

Italian start-up Genius Watter has developed a solar desalination solution that is claimed to be particularly suitable for remote areas with no connection to grid electricity. The system is able to produce up to 1,000 cubic meters of potable water per day at an opex of €0.20 per cubic meter.

The state-owned PV glass manufacturer, which claims to be one of the world’s big three, hived off its distracting new materials, solar module, and solar project development businesses to focus entirely on its core output in 2020.

Project selected in the auctions will be granted a 15-year PPA and will have to begin delivering power in December 2022.

The solar energy projects are expected to offset around one-third of the electric demand of Baltimore’s public buildings.

Soto Solar has submitted the project proposal to the Ministry of the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (Miteco). The solar plant could start production in 2023 or 2024 and will have a generation capacity of more than 2,000 GWh/year.

Developers have until May 27 to submit bids for NTPC’s projects anywhere in India. BHEL is seeking module supply partners for an aggregate 750 MW of panels.

An explosion occurred as firefighters were dealing with a fire in a 25 MWh lithium-iron phosphate battery associated with a 1.4 MW rooftop array at a shopping mall in the Chinese capital on Friday.

Solar installer Jake Warner has received surprising feedback from his customers after he chose to transition his company, Penrith Solar, exclusively to microinverters two months ago. “What I found is actually the opposite to what I expected,” Warner told pv magazine Australia

A new study from Australia has highlighted the potential of polysilicon passivated junctions for revolutionizing the commercial production of crystalline silicon solar panels. It also presented, however, the technical and economic hurdles that must still be removed to ensure its success, including the damage that this technology can produce for the polysilicon layers, due to the cell’s metallization process.

Oxfordshire-based Oxis Energy says it will produce the less flammable devices sought by the aviation industry using the same manufacturing processes as those used to make lithium-ion and conventional-lithium-sulfur products.

The database brings together photovoltaic performance data and meteorological values from PV systems located in all climate zones. It is being built by an international consortium including the Fraunhofer Center for Silicon Photovoltaics CSP, and the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences.

Storegga, Shell and Harbour Energy want to set up a 20 MW blue hydrogen production facility in the U.K. Australia’s Origin Energy wants to build a hydrogen facility at the Port of Townsville, in Queensland. South African company Sasol and Toyota South Africa Motors have announced a partnership to “commence exploration of the development of a green hydrogen mobility ecosystem in South Africa,” starting with zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell (FC) heavy-duty, long-haul trucks.

Researchers in the US ascertained that the partial shading provided by solar parks creates a microclimate that favors the abundant growth of more varied flowers and pollinators. They also found that partial shading increases bloom abundance by delaying bloom timing, increasing forage for pollinators during the hot and dry late season.

The vertically integrated factory is expected to be located near Sevilla, in southern Spain. The factory will be owned and operated by the newly created company Greenland Gigafactory.

Solar demand grew around 40%, year-on-year, during the first three months of 2021 and wafer producer Zhonghuan Semiconductor has raised its holding in Singaporean solar manufacturer Maxeon to become its second-largest shareholder after Total.

The UK-based flexible solar film developer is expanding into the Indian market with Thermax as its market development and manufacturing partner.

A technology-focused event held by the Africa Solar Industry Association has heard development pipelines across the continent are swiftly changing to accommodate double-sided PV panels, and that’s good news for solar tracker providers too.

Researchers in Bangladesh have simulated a solar cell based on a copper bismuth oxide material, used as an absorber, with n-type cadmium sulfide (CdS) utilized as a buffer layer. In the experiment, the device achieved an efficiency of 26.0%, an open-circuit voltage of 0.97 V, a short-circuit current density of 31.61 milliampere per square centimeter, and a fill factor of 84.58%.

The French energy company sold its 60.5% stake in Engie EPS to the Taiwan Cement Corporation for around €132 million.

The two companies are initially planning to build a 200 MW pumped-hydro facility in the Bostanlyk district of Uzbekistan’s Tashkent region.

The automaker’s future Ultium-powered EVs are designed for Level 2 and DC fast charging. Most will have 400V battery packs and up to 200 kW fast charging capability.

An group of international scientists has developed a mathematical model to design hybrid renewable energy systems relying on pumped hydro storage for islands. According to their analysis, which was applied to the Ometepe island in Nicaragua, a similar system could provide a cost of energy ranging from €0.047/kWh to €0.095/kWh.

Province Resources has signed a memorandum of understanding with French renewable energy developer Total Eren, which could see the two companies have equal shares in Province’s HyEnergy Zero Carbon Hydrogen project proposed in northwest Western Australia.